42 Actors on Marvel’s Black Panther Short List? Nah, Just a Few

With “42” star Chadwick Boseman at the very top of that very short list, at least according to the cool kids at Latino-Review.

Other names include Morris Chestnut and, well, I don’t know, he’s the only one that comes to mind at the moment. Of course, you could probably put Michael Jai White in there, and I believe Mr. Eko from “Lost” may or may not have actively campaigned for the role at one point.

Anyways, so Boseman is said to be on the top of Marvel’s “very short list” of actors the studio would like to play the Black Panther in his own superhero movie. That’s probably still a long ways off, perhaps Phase 3, even. (Marvel is currently at the beginning of their Phase 2, in case you’re keeping score at home.)

Boseman would certainly fit the profile that Marvel goes for — young, talented, and at the moment, not prohibitively expensive enough to sign on the dotted line for multiple Marvel movies at a good (i.e. relatively cheap) rate. It’s how Marvel found Chris Evans for Captain America, Chris Hemsworth for Thor, and Robert Downey Jr. for Iron Man.

For those not in the know, the Black Panther is one of Marvel’s few black superheroes, and is the king of his own fictional African country. He’s also a longtime/part-time Avenger in the comics, which makes his appearance in, say, “The Avengers 2″ perfectly logical to comic book fans. He also appeared in the “Ultimate Avengers” direct-to-DVD animated mpvie from a few years back, and if I recall correctly, recently married Storm from the X-Men in the comics.

Of course, Marvel hasn’t really been all that enthusiastic about getting a “Black Panther” movie off the ground, so who knows if this is just one of many meetings that will go nowhere. And like I said, it certainly looks like Marvel already has their Phase 2 slate of films figured out, so the earliest we’ll probably see someone suiting up in the Panther uniform would be, what, 5-6 years from now?